Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

Multifamily developer Wood Partners opens Seattle office

Wood Partners, one of the nation’s largest multifamily developers, has opened a Seattle office and hired Steve Orser away from Seattle’s Harbor Properties.

“Seattle is a market that we have been eying for four years and is the natural next step as we continue on our West Coast expansion that we started five years ago,” Frank Middleton, director of the West Coast division of Wood Partners, said in a news release. “Capital is coming back and Wood Partners couldn’t be in a better position to expand here. We are going to give Steve Orser our full focus and attention to aggressively build a portfolio in his market.”

Wood Partners said it “is actively seeking urban infill sites in both the Seattle and Portland metro areas for the development of Class A market-rate and workforce housing.” It said it chose Seattle as its Northwest base because of the city’s rebounding economy, well-educated, high-tech workforce and reputation as a “creative hotbed that is home to a growing number of existing and startup companies, fueling migration of recent college graduates from across the country.”

“We are in a great position to take advantage of the upturn in the market at a time when the fundamentals for new development are strong,” Orser said in the release. “This is largely driven by demographics combined with a dearth in development in the region that has spanned nearly three years.”

Orser was a director of development at Harbor and previously worked for Quadrant Corp. in Bellevue and CB Commercial Real Estate Group in Washington D.C.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..